This dark and sad tale of a middle aged lady visiting Rome and getting involved with some questionable people has been made before with Vivien Leigh but this newer version is worth watching for a more modern approach. The cast is top notch and the on location shooting is good.Helen Mirren as Mrs Stone is terrific as always showing all the emotions and insecurities that the role needs. She strikes me as slightly more together than Mrs Stone should be though. It's a pleasure to watch Anne Bancroft in one of her last roles.Olivier Martinez is a strange choice being French Spanish. His accent is a bit off. Couldn't an Italian have been cast instead? Rodrigo Santoro is good in his small role.Overall worth watching even if you are familiar with the story.

I love Helen Mirren. She is a beautiful, mature woman and a fine actress. Unfortunately, like a role undertaken by the character Mrs. Stone in the story, she is far too old for this casting. Likewise, Brian Dennehy is far too young to be her "much older" and ailing husband. I do wonder if the original 1961 film with Vivien Lee and Warren Beatty had similar chasms of verisimilitude and belief to leap.A failing, has-been actress and her wealthy and asexual or impotent husband take advantage of his bad health to book a face-saving trip to Europe. The husband dies en route. During her mourning period, Mrs. Stone is forced to occupy herself in Rome with post-war society, largely comprised of bitter and now-impoverished Italian royalty and a few lightweight and false-faced inter-continental "friends." I do not understand how Mrs. Stone's character unfolds and becomes so dependent upon the gigolo who has been assigned to compensate for her years without a sex life (and bilk her of whatever money he can) by a hungry Contessa. I also don't understand how she, starved in her marriage or not, is supposed to be so constantly sexually ready at the age of "50." Nevertheless, Mrs. Stone in some respects appears to be resigned to the loss of her youth and realistic about the affair; then, in the next moment, behaves like a lovesick girl. She has a great deal going for her and with her intellectual and financial resources one wonders why she did not move on voluntarily,geographically or romantically. She did not need to be lonely or immobilized. I suppose these developments say more about author Tennessee Williams, his mindset and prejudices, and his era than reality today.One curious character throughout the movie is a young, homeless and starving stalker, who is every bit if not more beautiful than Paolo the gigolo. He does seem to worship Mrs. Stone, who is indeed a handsome and well-put-together lady for her age. She is aware of and appears to be repulsed by his constant nearness, as he is socially beyond redemption, not just in his impoverished disarray, but his vulgar and undisciplined habits.The gigolo increasingly abuses and humiliates her, and inevitably breaks with her under pressure from the Contessa and perhaps his own restlessness. He has cruelly teased Mrs. Stone by comparing her to others of her ilk who are typically found with their throats slit.The final scene has Mrs. Stone flinging the keys to the gates of her villa down to the homeless stalker. You see him approach her and her standing in wait with a pained face and eyes downcast.I did not interpret this to be a romantic or sexual scene in the least. It was chilling and tragic. The phrase I used to my husband was "suicide by psycho."

Considering this was a made for TV, it does a respectable job of making itself comparable to the Louis De Rochemont-Jose Quintero production of 1961.Tennessee Williams' smarmy tale of the widow and the gigolo is enhanced by a fine cast. Helen Mirren's Karen is less physically attractive than Viven Leigh's, yet she's a strong actress and projects genuine pathos as the pathetic heroine.Olivier Martinez' Paolo is more personable and less edgy than Warren Beatty's, and has a more convincing accent. Anne Bancroft brings her own, distinctive interpretation of the Contessa, comparable to Lotte Lenya's.John Altman's score is serviceable (whereas Richard Addinsell's was hauntingly thematic). More standard is Robert Allan Ackerman's direction, compared to the distinctiveness of Quintero.Being a smaller screen work with a lower budget, this version of "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone" adds yet another offering of a basically unpleasant subject. Williams really seemed to like spinning these tales of once-beautiful, aging women, desperate for love and addictively pursuing affection, literally at any cost.

Since the other users have provided details, ad nauseam, I will only say that Mirren seems to be channeling Vivien Leigh at times, especially in the last half. Many mannerisms are nearly identical to Leigh's actions in the 1961 studio version.Also, strangely enough, I prefer the sound stage artifice of the 1960s. This cable movie was actually filmed on location, but in muted, boring colors. The 1961 feature has the wonderful Technicolor hues.I found the actor portraying The Young Man/stalker to be far more sexy than Martinez's Paolo, even though he eats food off the ground, urinates in public, hacks up phlegm and never speaks.Bancroft is fine, although I would have loved to have seen Sophia Loren take a stab at it.And will you cable movie directors STOP overusing the "atmospheric" smoke machines?!! It looks like your entire film crew was smoking cigarettes during the interior scenes.